


Fall Back Together

by DarkIsRising



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Fluff and Smut, M/M, Qui-Gon Jinn Lives, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:40:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29159784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkIsRising/pseuds/DarkIsRising
Summary: Two years after becoming a knight, a tired Obi-Wan runs into his former master on a crowded starferry.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 86
Kudos: 186





	1. Chapter 1

Traveling by starferry is better than traveling by freight, but not by much.

Exhaustion presses in on him, and Obi-Wan can feel it etched in the lines of his skin along with dust and sweat and whatever else his body has been coated in since he left the warring factions of S’mon behind. Obi-Wan isn’t sure the peace he brokered will last much longer than it’ll take for him to leave the star system, but after centuries of fighting between the two ruling clans he's done as well as he could do.

He is, after all, a Jedi, not a bloody miracle worker. 

Clutching a boarding pass in his hand, Obi-Wan can feel a flicker of irritation for the other passengers as they scurry about, yelling for their travel companions to hurry, arguing over seating assignments. Somewhere in the distance, but not nearly far enough, a youngling is shrieking. All of it is pressing down in one bright, pointed spot between his eyes. He wishes he were above finding these things as bothersome as he does—Force knows he’s trained for his entire life to find peace within a clamoring existence—but there are some days he’s the sum total of everything he’s ever learned as a Jedi and there are some days he falls spectacularly short. 

And right now, Obi-Wan is feeling all too human.

With his hood pulled up he can disguise his failings somewhat. Not enough to fool a Jedi, certainly, but enough to seem impassive as his boarding pass is examined by a Twi'lek by the ferry’s ramp.

“Jedi, huh?” she says, squinting to peer past the shadow his hood casts, as if his face might show her the secrets of the universe instead of a man with a year’s backlog of sleep debt who is desperately in need of a shower. “Funny, we never get Jedi on here and today we’ve got three. Wonder if you’d know the other two.”

“I’m sure I do,” he says and is careful not to let dismay color his voice.

With his luck one will be Mace Windu, he thinks and suppresses a sigh.

Obi-Wan is seldom alone anymore. Of late he can usually be found surrounded by ambassadors and dignitaries and all the sundry hangers-on that follow in the wake of people in power as he is sent on diplomatic mission after diplomatic mission. He’s never alone, but he finds he is frequently lonely. After his hasty knighthood ceremony two years previous there have been times that he’s wished for the company of another Jedi with an ache that he can’t quite meditate away.

Now here he is, the companionship he’s wanted is close at hand, and all he wants is to be left alone in whatever tin can he’s assigned to bunk in. Instead he’ll have to keep his diplomat’s mask in place for just a while longer, and hope he can power through some polite small talk before escaping to his room. Force help him if he’s expected to make any sort of salient points about the intricacies of philosophical thought or the current intergalactic political climate.

Expecting the worst has seldom left him underprepared for weathering the whims of fate. Still he is shocked when he looks up to find a tall man with long hair, a mouth that gives nothing away, and eyes that dance to see him.

Obi-Wan doesn’t try to temper the bright grin that breaks across his face to see Qui-Gon again, in the flesh, after so many long months of holocomming back and forth.

“Obi-Wan!” Anakin yells, barreling towards him, stubby padawan braid flapping behind his ear. He is stopped short by a clearing of Qui-Gon’s throat, and mutters: “Oh, sorry,” as he gives Obi-Wan a quick, tiny bow.

“Are you going to Coruscant, too?” he asks, brimming with excitement.

“Not quite,” Obi-Wan says. “Kuat. So I’ll be deboarding before you.” 

Qui-Gon draws nearer and Obi-Wan bows to his former master, who returns the gesture. 

“See? That’s how it’s done, Ani,” Qui-Gon says as he clasps his current padawan’s shoulder. It is a sign of affection, but Obi-Wan can’t help but wonder if it also serves to keep his energetic apprentice contained. “It's good to see you, Obi-Wan.” 

"You as well, Master," he says and Qui-Gon’s mouth softens in a smile that Obi-Wan can feel spill though his belly like a glowing warmth.

If ever there was a Jedi that Obi-Wan could trust to see him at his most rumpled and space-weary, it is the one that is currently standing here before him.

They are, as it turns out, assigned rooms in the same hall. It’s easy to find his stride by Qui-Gon’s side, their years apart are nothing compared to their years together and Obi-Wan can feel himself slide effortlessly to match his master’s pace while Anakin follows slightly behind. The halls are narrow and Obi-Wan’s arm brushes against Qui-Gon’s as they wind their way through the starferry’s decks, though neither of them makes mention of it. By the time they get to where they’re going Obi-Wan is more awake than he’s been in some time.

His room is a step above a tin can, but only just. There’s a bed, a chair, and enough space to stand in the middle of it and stare blankly, not sure what he ought to do with himself. He finally settles on placing his rucksack down on the chair when a fast knock comes rapping at his door.

He opens it to reveal Anakin with a very earnest, very carefully recited request to join them for supper in Qui-Gon’s room.

As soon as the invitation is dispensed Anakin immediately starts bouncing on his toes and doesn’t stop until Obi-Wan lays a heavy hand on his shoulder like he’d seen Qui-Gon do. Right away the boy’s bright, fizzling energy releases and he settles enough that he is no longer making Obi-Wan slightly motion sick to watch.

“I’d be honored,” Obi-Wan says, to which the boy grins and runs away in the direction of his shared room with Qui-Gon.

If he’s to spend time in the company of others in a no-doubt equally small room, he’s going to need to shower so Obi-Wan gathers his things and heads toward the communal ‘fresher at the end of the hall. He enters to find himself alone in the long, muggy chamber but as he’s slipping off his clothes he hears someone else enter.

“It seems we had the same idea,” a voice says behind him and he turns to find Qui-Gon.

Obi-Wan wants to say something wry and just on the edge of insouciant—and he can see that Qui-Gon’s eyes are sparkling with anticipated laughter—but Qui-Gon is slipping off his tabard and tunics beside him and it’s all he can do not to stare as long tracks of skin wrapped around lean muscle are revealed. Qui-Gon pushes down his pants and Obi-Wan turns to very carefully—very deliberately—fold his own clothes before placing them in a provided locker.

He was so sure he was past this. Obi-Wan’s teenage years had been a particular kind of torment as he’d found himself falling more and more in lust with his master. Long jaunts across the stars with only Qui-Gon for company, missions in tight quarters with a man whose idea of casual nudity was especially hard to escape while hurtling through hyperspace, dreams that left him sticky and mortified in the mornings. All of that Obi-Wan had endured and emerged on the other side of, his friendship with his master intact and Qui-Gon none the wiser. Now, here he is: ten years later and a Knight of the Order on top of it all, and he can feel his face beginning to redden like he’s sixteen all over again.

“Obi-Wan?” Qui-Gon asks, and Obi-Wan doesn’t need to turn to hear the concerned frown on his face.

“Sorry, it’s just you’re—” _naked,_ he thinks, but he can’t say that. “Here. And I’m—” _naked_ , but he settles on: “Tired.”

“They do keep you busy,” he says sympathetically, and Obi-Wan decides to chance it. He glances over to see the long lines of Qui-Gon’s body—his broad back, the curve of his ass, his long legs—as he shoves his balled up clothing into a locker. “If you’re too tired to come to our room for supper later—”

“No, not at all,” Obi-Wan cuts in. This chance to reconnect with Qui-Gon, as brief as it is, is a gift that he won’t be squandering. Force only knows when an opportunity like this will present itself again, or what condition they’ll be in when it does. If it does. _Attend to this moment,_ he chides to himself before meeting Qui-Gon’s blue gaze and smiling brightly. “It’s nothing that a shower can’t fix.”

Qui-Gon claps his shoulder with a friendly hand and Obi-Wan very deliberately keeps his eyes from dipping lower than Qui-Gon’s chin. “Sonic or water?”

“Water,” Obi-Wan says without having to ponder the question.

“Hedonist,” Qui-Gon teases, slinging a clean towel from the pile on a bench over his shoulder.

“I learned it from my master.”

Obi-Wan takes a folded towel and follows Qui-Gon to the showers.

“A knight for only two years and already spreading lies about me throughout the galaxy, I see.”

“I find that wherever I go the lies are already there. It’s my job to merely correct them.”

Qui-Gon laughs as he stands beneath a showerhead and the water shoots out, warm and steaming. “Dismantling my hard-won reputation one planet at a time, is it?”

“Something like that.”

Obi-Wan sets the water as hot as he dares and lets it blast him with pressure. He closes his eyes, tilting his face up as the water sluices off dirt and time. The longer he stands there the more his muscles begin to loosen and he hadn't realized how braced he’s been for trouble until this moment when he’s safe to finally let it go. This is why Jedi work better in tandem, when they can take turns on alert. He’s been going it alone for so long that that tense wariness had become a mantle he never dares remove. But now, with Qui-Gon beside him, Obi-Wan can finally relax.

He isn’t sure how long he stands there in silence. Steam is curling the air—a soft heat that envelops and protects—and he feels lightyears better when he surfaces. 

“Long day?” Qui-Gon asks.

“Long day, long year, long everything.” It comes out more morose than he intends and he can tell by the way Qui-Gon draws closer that he is worried so he fixes a smile on his face. “But it’s nothing I wasn’t prepared to handle after so long under your tutelage, Master.”

The thick haze that fills the shower room is a veil that separates them from the rest of time and space. It’s easier to look at Qui-Gon when they are the only two beings here on a new world of white mist and dizzying heat.

There are new depths to the lines near Qui-Gon’s eyes and his beard is more silver than Obi-Wan remembers, but he’s still as beautiful as he ever was. It isn’t a thought that fills Obi-Wan with want or embarrassment or any number of feelings that he’s had to purge over the years. Now it just is. An immutable fact of the universe. From the intelligence that sits in his blue eyes to the easy way he fills his long body to the way he wears his nakedness as unflinchingly as he dons his Jedi robes—Qui-Gon is beautiful. 

“You probably ought to get used to calling me ‘Qui-Gon,’” he says, hair lanky and dark from the water. “I’ve not been your master for some time now.”

“Qui-Gon,” Obi-Wan amends and the name plucks at his lips in a song that is fond and glad.

Qui-Gon’s shower setting must be warmer than Obi-Wan realizes because there’s a red tinge that is rising up along the ridges of his cheeks just above his trimmed beard. Abruptly Qui-Gon shuts off his water and reaches for his towel.

“We’ll see you later?” Qui-Gon asks, briskly patting himself dry as Obi-Wan nods.

Wordlessly, Obi-Wan watches as his former master leaves, escaping the overwhelming press of wet heat and the heady fog of timelessness for a world of recycled air and entropy.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***  
> I will be absolutely honest. There is a line in here that I have blatantly stolen from “The West Wing.” I tried my very hardest not to but it’s one of the best lines in the history of television and so I had no hope of improving on it. 
> 
> ***

Qui-Gon isn’t running away. 

He _isn’t._

He's made enough strategic retreats to know that that’s what this is: a retreat.

There’s nothing shameful in acknowledging you’re in over your head and falling back to reassess accordingly. It’s a lesson Qui-Gon is careful to pass on to all his apprentices. Anakin is still too young to understand but Obi-Wan always was a perfectionist. A striver. Too willing to bleed before admitting weakness.

That isn’t true anymore, though. He’d stood in the locker room—naked and solemn under the blue-white refresher lights—as he’d told Qui-Gon that he was tired. The Obi-Wan that had been his padawan would have never admitted to being tired. He would have locked out his back until it strained with the effort. Planted an inscrutable smile on his face to cover his bluff.

There’s something different in the way he holds himself now, a slight shift in posture, something ineffable. Qui-Gon has seen other padawans change in the same way after knighthood. Solo missions honing a fine blade’s edge as the precariousness of their place in the universe is suddenly apparent with no master nearby to guide their hand should something go wrong. 

Qui-Gon had thought, foolishly, that Obi-Wan was as fully formed an apprentice as any he had seen before him. He’d approached knighthood already having slain a Sith. He’d carried his master back from the brink of death. Qui-Gon had thought that if there were any changes they would be from age, not from some new sense of self. Sense of purpose. He is now realizing that it was a failure on the part of his own imagination that he hadn’t anticipated this Obi-Wan that would emerge, forged with new resolution. 

It’s hard to reconcile the padawan Obi-Wan had been with the knight that Qui-Gon spotted from across a crowded starferry, and it wasn’t just his newly grown beard that couldn’t quite hide away the flash of dimples as he’d smiled at the sight of Qui-Gon. Hard to remember the boy when the man had spoken his name like a prayer in the rising heat of the shower.

'Supper' as he’d optimistically termed it, is whatever he and Anakin can secret away from the commissary under the folds of their robes without being detected.

“But what about that?” Anakin asks, pointing to the sign that screams in red letters **No Food Beyond This Point** in several languages. “Aren’t we supposed to be, like, examples and follow the rules and stuff?”

“We follow our own rules,” Qui-Gon says as enigmatically as he can, but Anakin at this age isn’t an earnest-eyed Obi-Wan who took Qui-Gon’s words as dogma. Anakin has questions.

“You mean the Council’s?”

“Force, no,” Qui-Gon laughs.

“Then who's? The Order’s?” He pauses to think faster than the bat of a Toydarian’s wings. “Is that different from the Council’s? Or even the Code's?”

“It can be,” Qui-Gon says. “And frequently, in my experience, is.”

“Then how—”

“It’s something perhaps that you should meditate on, my dear padawan. Now take care how you walk, you’ve been dropping dried jogan fruit from your cloak since we passed Deck Four.”

Qui-Gon had held a vague notion that pushing the furniture to the sides would give them enough floor space to sit together, but the beds are bolted down and the single chair that is inexplicably placed in the center of it all doesn’t budge.

“What now?” Anakin asks, watching Qui-Gon from his bed, hands propped under his chin while his master strains. “Are you going to Force it to move?”

It’s tempting, but Qui-Gon learned long ago that any property damage on interstellar travel came out of his own accounts.

“Now,” he tells Anakin. “We adapt.”

When the knock finally comes, Qui-Gon answers the door because he’s closest. It’s a mistake, and one that he realizes only when it slides open to reveal Obi-Wan all at once, a mere arm’s length away.

"Obi-Wan.” he says, drawing a breath to say more. Just then Obi-Wan’s hair, softer for having been washed so recently, falls across his forehead and into his eyes—copper against stormy blue. After two years the bristling spikes of his old padawan haircut are a thing of the past, as is his smooth, shaven chin. A not-so-small part of Qui-Gon wants to reach out with his thumb and discover for himself if the cleft that he remembers is still there or if it too somehow was shed along with his padawan braid. He stares and it is a short route from there to Obi-Wan’s lips. 

Qui-Gon blinks when he realizes Obi-Wan is looking at him, waiting politely for him to say something more. “You’re here."

“Yes. And clean,” he says with an easy smile.

A warmth rises like steam through Qui-Gon, and he can feel the humid choke of it as it scalds his face and lands on his cheeks. Instead of standing naked in the refresher, though, he’s wearing far too many layers for this sudden heat in his tiny quarters. There’s nowhere to run— _retreat_ —to. All he can do is hope that whatever this is that’s making his pulse race in his ears, will go unobserved.

It doesn't.

Obi-Wan looks at him closely, keen eyes taking in Qui-Gon with a tilt of his head, and Qui-Gon finds himself wondering how he hadn’t noticed before how long Obi-Wan’s eyelashes are.

“Are you going to let me in?” he says at last, an amused murmur that Qui-Gon can feel crawl across his skin.

With a start Qui-Gon steps away from the doorway. There isn’t far for him to go, though, so when Obi-Wan passes by he can feel their clothes brushing together for the briefest of moments. 

“Hi, Obi-Wan,” Anakin says from where he’s sitting on his bed, legs swinging. He’s blessedly oblivious to the scene Qui-Gon has just made by the door. “I hope you don’t like dried jogan fruit. I lost most of it in the hall.”

“So that’s why I saw so many cleaning droids scurrying about out there. You know there are signs up that say not to bring food into the rooms.”

“Yeah,” Anakin agrees. “But Master Qui-Gon says we don’t have to follow the rules.”

“Oh _did_ he?” Obi-Wan says and this time the smile breaks into a blinding grin. “Well, then, it’s a good thing I’m here. Someone needs to provide some guidance to you, padawan, before your master’s amorality corrupts you, too.”

Anakin’s forehead creases with disappointment. “Are you going to make us take the food back?”

“Well,” Obi-Wan says with a pragmatic shrug. “It’s already here. Nothing to be done about that now.”

Qui-Gon is feeling more like himself, the earlier spell dissipating as his reputation is laughingly impugned. He crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow. “Amorality?”

“Not my word, of course.” The eyes Qui-Gon had only just been admiring grow large with feigned innocence. “I would never think that of you. Just some chatter I heard in passing through the halls of the temple.”

“Recently?”

“Oh, no, this wasn’t recent, forgive me if I gave you that impression.” Obi-Wan doesn’t appear the slightest bit abashed. “No, this was what I heard virtually the entirety of my time as your apprentice.”

“Ah, I see,” Qui-Gon says, and he does. Whatever strangeness has been stirring between them this, at least, is the same as it was before. He doesn’t fight his smile, glad to be on familiar footing with Obi-Wan’s ruthless, roguish courteousness. “Go on, sit.” Qui-Gon says, motioning to the immoveable chair. “The seat of honor.” 

“It is an honor I dare not dream of,” he says drolly. “Honestly, Qui-Gon, I'm fine with the floor. You take the chair.”

“No, I insist.” Before he can say another word Qui-Gon sits on the floor, back braced against the edge of Anakin’s bed. With a put-upon sigh Obi-Wan settles into the metal chair, shifting to find a better angle. “There you go. You look like a veritable king.”

“This feels strange.” He settles finally, legs apart, and Qui-Gon is beginning to realize he’d made a mistake. He only meant to make Obi-Wan feel less like his apprentice and more like a friend, but Qui-Gon hadn’t accounted for being eye level with Obi-Wan’s spreading thighs. “I’m not used to seeing the top of your head.”

“Can we eat now?” Anakin asks, and Qui-Gon nods, glad for an excuse to turn away from Obi-Wan and all the number of things that are coming unbidden to his mind at that moment. All the ways he wants to reach out, to take Obi-Wan’s thighs in hand until he’s spreading them further, to bend forward until he’s able to bring his mouth to—

“Is that mollusk jerky?” Obi-Wan asks and Qui-Gon blinks, bringing himself back to the moment.

Anakin passes the jerky to Obi-Wan and it isn’t long before Anakin is demanding to hear about Obi-Wan’s missions. The knight obliges, and soon he is trading memories for bland commissary food. Anakin listens to his adventures with a rapt stillness Qui-Gon has seldom seen in his padawan, not even during meditation.

Obi-Wan is a natural storyteller when the mood strikes him, and as he eases into the role his posture unspools. He relaxes into the chair, legs spreading further, but the carnal thoughts that had plagued Qui-Gon earlier have left his mind. Now he is just glad to see Obi-Wan content and comfortable. It’s nice to follow the rise and fall of Obi-Wan’s voice as he effortlessly plucks apart the best of his life experiences for Anakin’s amusement, while nimbly avoiding the worst of it.

"So you were _riding_ a Gorganal?"

"We were. Well, Qui-Gon was,” Obi-Wan’s lips twitch with mischief. “ _I_ became unseated rather unexpectedly.”

Qui-Gon had known this moment was coming from the second Obi-Wan had launched into the tale of their assignment on Claxak, though it doesn’t stop Qui-Gon from genially picking up the threads of their long standing argument. “I did tell you to hold on, Obi-Wan, your inattentiveness was hardly my fault.”

“I was being attentive, Qui-Gon. I was quite attentive to the lava field that had opened up behind us.”

Blinking past eyes that are going glossy with exhaustion, Anakin leans closer at the mention of the word ‘lava.’ “So what happened?” he asks, eagerly.

“I came to a sudden arboreal stop.” A laugh teases the edges of Obi-Wan’s words.

“Huh?” Anakin blinks again.

“He flew into a tree,” Qui-Gon translates. “And since bacta has been banned on the planet for as long as it’s been around, we had to close his wounds the old fashioned way: with a needle and thread.”

“So uncivilized,” Obi-Wan says with a rueful shake of his head.

Valiantly, Anakin fights back a yawn. “Did they have to sew in a lot of stitches?”

Time has long since made an anecdote out of the pains of the past and so Obi-Wan laughs with fond recollection. “Oh, there were twenty at least.” 

“Did it hurt?”

“Very much.” His lips quiver with barely contained impishness. “Though I was in good hands.”

“What he means,” Qui-Gon interrupts. “Is that while their healers worked he held my hands in a grip so tight I nearly lost the use of them.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that hard. I’m sure I was more stoic than that.”

“There were bruises, Obi-Wan.”

This time Anakin can’t hide away his yawn when it comes and Qui-Gon pulls himself off the floor. “And I think that’s enough for one night.” When his padawan starts to protest he claps a hand on his shoulder, steering him out the door and toward the hall’s refresher to brush his teeth and prepare himself for sleep.

Obi-Wan gets up from the chair to help clear away what’s left of their haphazard meal, falling into place by Qui-Gon’s side. He is a warm, solid presence and when their hips brush together in the narrow space between bed and chair, Qui-Gon doesn’t have the urge to escape from him any longer. He wants to stay, to etch this moment into his memory, so that he can bring it forward on the days when the loneliness of space nips at his heels.

“I can’t remember if I ever told you,” Obi-Wan says into the companionable quiet. “But I was sent back there.”

“Claxak?”

“Mm,” Obi-Wan affirms with a soft sound. “A few months after my knighting.” 

“I presume you learned your lesson and didn’t fly into any trees?”

“No, I didn’t fly into any trees, though I did wind up needing stitches again.” He rolls up his sleeve to reveal a long silver line cutting from wrist to elbow. “It required a few more than twenty.”

“I’d say,” Qui-Gon says, delicately taking Obi-Wan’s arm to inspect it closer. Here was the part that Obi-Wan is careful to keep out of his stories to Anakin. This is the part that they mask when they turn their missions into self-deprecating narratives, when words take the place of blood once spilled and pain once endured.

Obi-Wan can tease Qui-Gon about his sudden stop and the unexpected flight that followed, but in that moment there were sputtering plumes of noxious, black smoke that needed to be escaped. There was still a felon to track down as Qui-Gon kept a careful eye on Obi-Wan’s pallor, on the blood that stained his tabard, on the tremor of his hand as he clutched his lightsaber.

They can talk about twenty stitches, but that doesn’t begin to describe the unmedicated agony of a needle as it passes through flesh. Qui-Gon can grouse about a bruised hand but his discomfort was nothing compared to his relief as the sun rose behind Obi-Wan, spilling across the world in oranges and golds. Nothing compared to his gratitude that they were still alive to see a new day break.

“Was there someone there to hold your hand?” He doesn’t know what he’s asking or why, yet he still needs to know.

“No,” Obi-Wan says, understanding anyway, as he always does. “But not from any lack of interest on his part.”

Some other man was there—perhaps a Jedi, perhaps not—and something clenches in his chest to hear it. “What stopped you?”

“His weren't the hands I found myself thinking of.”

It is a strange thing, but just then—despite the harsh white glare of the room’s lights—Qui-Gon could almost believe that Obi-Wan is awash in a glow of oranges and golds as relief breaks across Qui-Gon, spilling like the light of a new day.


	3. Chapter 3

It isn't far to go.

Qui-Gon is still holding his forearm, so it's simple enough for Obi-Wan to drop his elbow and slide his arm down until he’s holding one of Qui-Gon’s hands. This hand is familiar: long fingers, a broad palm, a steady strength. He knows this hand, for all that he’s never held it like this before.

It’s simple, too, to step closer. To tilt his face up. To rise to the balls of his feet until he can press his lips to the corner of Qui-Gon’s mouth. It’s not a proper kiss, but it’s as close as he dares under the circumstances.

The route there is short but it takes an eternity to pull away. To steel himself for what he’ll see in Qui-Gon’s face. A moment ago he was certain that this is the path they’d been traveling. Now he isn't so sure, but there’s nothing to be done about it now except stand back and assess the fall out.

Obi-Wan waits for the man before him to say something— _do_ something—but he only closes his eyes and breathes. He’s caught Qui-Gon by surprise, and that is new enough to give Obi-Wan pause. He releases Qui-Gon’s hand as a nest of gnawing womp rats take hold of his belly, and he can feel the distant edges of it as he’s gutted by this quiet.

“If—” Obi-Wan starts, voice rough, and he has to lick his numb lips to continue. “If that was at all unwelcome, I apologize—”

At the word _apologize_ Qui-Gon’s eyes open and Obi-Wan is pinned in place by some emotion in those blue depths that swallows the breath from his lungs and pulls him in an undertow he can’t escape from. 

“Don’t apologize,” Qui-Gon commands and Obi-Wan has to stop himself from instinctively murmuring _Yes, Master_ and what does _that_ say about the appropriateness of what he’s just done? “We should talk—”

“Talk,” Obi-Wan says, nodding agreeably enough as he takes another step backward. His calves hit the low-lying bed and it strikes him at that moment how laughably small this room is. He can feel the buzz of that laughter as it shimmers through his throat and he isn’t so far gone that he doesn’t taste the faint hysteria of it as he releases it to the Force.

 _Talk._ Talking doesn’t bode well, and it’s the last thing—the _last_ thing, the very, very last thing— he wants to do with Qui-Gon but he can’t escape the courteous manners that have been drummed into him over years of diplomacy.

“Perhaps we could retire to my room for some tea?”

“Yes,” Qui-Gon says and now he’s nodding agreeably, too. “Tea."

Usually he can sense what Qui-Gon is thinking, but they’ve never been here before. There’s no flightpath’s coordinates to key in, no hyperlane to follow. He’s a good pilot but Obi-Wan can’t fly this unfathomable distance when he’s so blinded by the whiteout rush of stars as they stream past.

“Let me make sure Anakin goes to bed, first.” Qui-Gon says and once again it’s Obi-Wan’s turn to nod. He doesn’t need to push out with his senses to know that Anakin will be back soon, and as much as he wants to leave for his room and regroup there, his legs are too stubborn to let him take the coward’s way out. Obi-Wan can’t make himself run away, so instead he is a shadow by the door as Qui-Gon oversees getting Anakin to sleep, telling the boy that he’ll have his comm on him if Anakin needs anything. 

Then it’s Qui-Gon’s turn to be a shadow as he follows a step behind while Obi-Wan leads them both to his room.

“I don’t have any tea in here,” Obi-Wan admits when the door closes behind them.

“I didn’t come here for the tea, anyway.”

The timber of Qui-Gon’s voice is low and deep and with a shivering anticipation Obi-Wan turns to look at him. “So you want—-”

“Yes.” As Qui-Gon’s head tilts down his dark hair pours over his shoulders, and that’s the last thing Obi-Wan sees before his eyes shut, yielding their dominion to his other senses.

Obi-Wan’s world becomes a cacophony of sound and taste and texture. Two broad palms frame his face, hold him in place, before sweeping back to clutch at his hair. A soft mouth meets his, a dry press, before a tongue flickers to ask for permission that Obi-Wan had long ago granted. The rasp of Qui-Gon’s beard on his as he changes the angle of their kiss to deepen it and now all Obi-Wan can taste is a warmth that he wants to crawl inside. Obi-Wan knows he’s making pleading sounds, can feel the rumble of it in his chest, but he can’t seem to make it stop as Qui-Gon drives him backward, splaying him against the closed door.

“I thought we needed to talk?” Obi-Wan asks when Qui-Gon’s mouth leaves his to find the juncture of his neck. 

“I thought so, too.” Obi-Wan feels the words more than he hears them. They skim his skin with the softest of brushes and are swiftly followed by the nip of teeth.

“What changed?” He doesn’t know why he’s asking. He doesn’t actually care about the answer, but it’s a habit for his brain to keep him talking long after Obi-Wan has lost the ability to think. 

“You are always running out ahead of me, Obi-Wan.” A bite that makes him gasp. “Blazing your own path forward.” Now there is a knee between his thighs and he surges against that blessed pressure. “Forgive this old man for needing a moment to catch up.”

There’s something he should be saying—something chiding about the words _old man_ —but it’s lost as his wrists are taken by an uncompromising grip and held over his head. He’s stretched as long as his body can go, and still it isn’t nearly enough to follow Qui-Gon’s lips when he stands at his full height 

“How are you so tall?” Obi-Wan demands, straining against the delicious helplessness of his position.

With another press of his leg between Obi-Wan’s thighs, Qui-Gon counters: “How are you so short?”

“I'm taller when I’m horizontal.”

That stills Qui-Gon, and he withdraws a little. There is mirth in his eyes and his kiss-reddened lips quirk in a smile. “Far be it for me to disparage the quality of your education, Obi-Wan, but that can't be even remotely true.”

Obi-Wan can’t help the bright grin that flashes across his face. Qui-Gon is devouring him. Qui-Gon is hard for him, and if Obi-Wan can get him to a bed, he might even be able to do something about it other than writhe mindlessly against Qui-Gon’s muscular thigh. “Only one way to find out.”

Whatever had spurned Qui-Gon’s reluctance back in his own room is cast off as they make their way across Obi-Wan’s small quarters. The damned chair is a nuisance and Obi-Wan trips against the unmoving, sharp-cornered lip of the seat. He’d be more annoyed, but it gives Qui-Gon a chance to shrug out of enough of his clothes that he is somehow only wearing pants by the time they make it to the bed. 

Obi-Wan is naked, though how and by whose hands he can’t reliably say.

Everything is moving so fast. Not a few hours earlier he’d been studiously ignoring a naked Qui-Gon Jinn in the refresher’s showers. Now somehow he’s got his hand down Qui-Gon’s pants and is grabbing for the solid length of his erection. Maybe they should have stopped to talk this through first, Obi-Wan finds himself thinking as he’s pushed to sit on the bed’s edge. 

Qui-Gon falls to his knees between Obi-Wan’s thighs and his heart beats triple time at the sight. “What are you doing?” he asks nonsensically, because it’s obvious where this is going, as Qui-Gon’s head drops lower.

A teasing tongue runs across the length of his cock and Obi-Wan gasps. “I thought you said you liked looking at the top of my head.”

“I didn't say that,” he protests and what in all the small gods’ names is he doing arguing with Qui-Gon at a time like this? “I said I wasn’t used to it.”

“Ah.” Qui-Gon says solemnly. “Well. Seeing as repetition breeds familiarity, we’ll have to do this often enough that you become used to it, then.”

He tries to shake away the cloud of lust that has taken hold of his thoughts, making logic near to impossible. Obi-Wan wants to turn over the implications of what Qui-Gon had said, to parse through all the possible meanings there could be for the words 'often enough,' and the heady burst of hope that follows at the thought that this thing between them might last longer than one night. 

Opening his mouth, Obi-Wan tries to ask, but words are lost as air flees his lungs. Qui-Gon is on him, swallowing, and it’s all Obi-Wan can do to plunge his hands into that long silver-flecked hair and hold on. Hands find his hips, directing him to cant upwards. Obi-Wan obeys and is rewarded with Qui-Gon’s spit-slickened fingers pushing inside of him. 

When he comes it’s with Qui-Gon’s mouth on his cock, two thick-knuckled fingers in his ass, and the release of a decade’s worth of yearning finally made flesh.

It is no small feat to settle back into his body again, but Qui-Gon rides out the sparking aftershocks with him until Obi-Wan is gasping. He folds in on himself, the sensitive head of his cock still being lathed by a merciless tongue, and finally Qui-Gon releases him with a deep chuckle that Obi-Wan can feel skitter up his body and settle in his throat.

“Don’t,” he says, voice a brittle husk, as Qui-Gon starts to pull his hand away. Obi-Wan stops him—grabbing at his wrist, desperate to keep those fingers inside him. “I want you to have me.” The fingers inside Obi-Wan reflectively clench and it wrenches another shudder from him. 

Qui-Gon’s head lowers, but this time there’s no wicked intention to it. He rests his forehead on Obi-Wan’s knee and says with wistful regret: “I can’t.”

“Don’t you want to?” he asks, carding his fingers through Qui-Gon’s hair by his temple, drawing back the dark spill that curtains his face to better see his expression.

“Yes,” Qui-Gon says emphatically enough that it takes some of the worry away when his hand slips out of Obi-Wan, though he feels the loss of it sharply. “Of course I want to, but I can’t. We can’t. I’m...” he trails off as he searches for the words, looking into the empty space over Obi-Wan’s shoulder as if they might be found there. “Quite large.”

Obi-Wan can’t help it. He laughs, loud and disbelieving. Blue eyes meet his and if Obi-Wan didn’t know better he would almost think that Qui-Gon is scowling at him. “Yes, I think I might have noticed something like that about you, a time or two, over the years.”

“I don't want to hurt you. I would need something more than saliva and I haven't got anything to use to—”

“Oh!” Obi-Wan says, understanding makes his voice loud. “Oh, well, I do, actually. Have something, I mean. Check my bag.”

He knows that Qui-Gon has found the tube of slick when he hears him start to laugh. “This isn't part of your Temple-issued toiletries,” he teases and Obi-Wan knows what he's reading. 

**Flavored and warming,** the little tube proclaims boldly and Obi-Wan remembers how ominous that word _flavored_ had been the first time he’d seen it. Without a signifier it begged the question: flavored what, precisely? Though when he’d received it Obi-Wan had had no interest in finding out.

“It was a gift,” Obi-Wan says as he watches Qui-Gon turn the lube over in his hand as he inspects it, standing over Obi-Wan’s rucksack that has been abandoned once more on the bolted down chair. “From an admirer.” 

“It hasn’t been opened,” Qui-Gon notes.

“I said an admirer, Qui-Gon. Not a lover.” He can see from the way Qui-Gon raises a bemused eyebrow at him that his tone has gone crisp and Coruscanti. “Will that be sufficient?”

Qui-Gon nods and heat cuts through Obi-Wan’s body, slicing through his belly and constricting his chest. This is happening. His heart speeds up and Obi-Wan can hear the pulse of it as it thrums through his veins, so loud he’s surprised Qui-Gon can’t hear it, too.

This is happening.

But Qui-Gon isn’t falling over him, blanketing his body with his long limbs and muscled torso like he’s always imagined this moment would go in all the times he’d been weak enough to fantasize about something that could never be. He’s still standing by the chair, taking the travel pack in hand to riffle through it again. 

“What are you looking for?”

“A barrier. It’s been years since the last time I did this, but I remember that much at least,” he says, self-deprecating humor curling through his words.

“Oh.” Obi-Wan says. He leans back until he’s propped on his elbows and closes his eyes, as if any measure of distance from Qui-Gon will make what he’s about to say at all easier. “Well, if you’re clean you wont need one of those on my account.”

The waiting as Qui-Gon pieces together what Obi-Wan has just confessed is short—his former master is nothing if not dizzyingly intelligent—though it still feels like an eternity. He opens his eyes to watch the flickers of confusion settle into a surprised understanding.

Surprising Qui-Gon into wordlessness twice in one evening, that has to be a record of some sort.

“Do you mean to say that you’ve never—” He’s gaping at Obi-Wan. Mouth opening and closing, and at any other time Obi-Wan would be delighted to have finally gotten one over on the notoriously imperturbable Qui-Gon Jinn. “I had thought that you and Quinlan had, at least. Surely.”

A memory comes to Obi-Wan. An old argument. Quinlan pacing his room, frustrated: _Obi-Wan this is getting ridiculous. He’ll never want you like that, and I can’t stop wanting you like that._

“No, not me and Quinlan.” Obi-Wan says, banishing the memory of Quinlan then to watch Qui-Gon now. “Not me and anybody, ever.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s…” Obi-Wan’s voice trails off as he gathers the courage to speak. Here it is: the thing that leaves him more flayed open—more exposed— than sprawling here naked and spent in front of Qui-Gon ever could. “It’s just you. It’s always been just you.”


	4. Chapter 4

It’s disorienting, to feel the axis of one’s world spin off kilter when you’re down to your pants and holding a personal lubricant of dubious quality.

Obi-Wan is splayed out across the bed. His chin raises as he meets Qui-Gon’s gaze, eyes as stormy as the rainy season on Tog, and he can still see places where his skin is slick from sweat and his cock is wet from Qui-Gon’s mouth.

Naked and brave, debauched and daring—he holds Qui-Gon’s eyes, and the world tilts.

The way Obi-Wan had pressed that first kiss to his lips, the way he’d fallen into Qui-Gon’s arms here in his room, he’d been so self-assured. Inexperience was the last thing Qui-Gon would have ever guessed. And what had Qui-Gon done? He’d taken Obi-Wan and held him against the door, pinning him so he couldn’t move. He’d used his tongue and fingers until Obi-Wan was all but sobbing from it. Nothing to ease him into this new kind of intimacy. Instead Qui-Gon had fallen on him like he was a thirsting man and Obi-Wan was an oasis that could be here and gone from one moment to the next. 

“I didn’t know,” Qui-Gon says at last.

“You weren’t meant to.”

It's small comfort.

He sets the rucksack back down on the chair and quietly bends to put the little tube back where he’d found it.

“Don’t you dare put that away, Qui-Gon Jinn.” His voice is blistering with determination. “I know my mind. I want this.”

“It’s late,” Qui-Gon says, voice as reasonable as he can make it. “You’ve been tired since the moment you boarded. There’s no rush, we can meet again tomorrow night after you’ve rested a bit.”

With the same preternatural grace that he brings to everything he does—from walking across a boarding ramp to flipping overhead in an Ataru attack—Obi-Wan rolls from the bed to his feet. The room is so cramped that there isn’t far to go, and yet Qui-Gon gets the distinct impression that he’s stalking over in those two, small steps.

“Knowing what you now know,” Obi-Wan says, fierce and close. “Do you still want me?”

Ye gods, what a question. “Of course I do.”

The tube is snatched from his hands and from one blink to the next Obi-Wan has covered his hand with the slightly blue ooze. A plucking on his pants is the only warning Qui-Gon gets before they are opened and pulled down his thighs in a dexterous—if entirely frivolous—display of Force manipulation. “Obi-Wan,” he chides out of habit.

“Write me up,” Obi-Wan says, eyes sparking in challenge. “I’m sure the Council would love to read about this in your report.”

He takes Qui-Gon in his palm and begins intent strokes that cover him in a warming slickness from base to tip. Obi-Wan’s hand never stops, and he can feel himself lengthen and grow firmer at the sure grip of it. The more Obi-Wan works, the more the lube has a chance to oxidize and soon there is a heat on him that leaves him gasping. Obi-Wan leans forward and it’s a good thing the chair behind Qui-Gon is bolted down. It takes his sudden weight as Obi-Wan’s mouth catches his, kissing him, giving no quarter. Every breath Qui-Gon sucks in is filled with Obi-Wan’s panting exhales until he is lightheaded from it.

When Obi-Wan is satisfied, he pulls away to lick at his palm. “Hm,” he says, tasting the lingering blue with a clever, pink tongue. “Not bad.”

Qui-Gon is too far gone in that moment to respond.

“Now fuck me, Qui-Gon. I can't take this dithering about any longer.”

He’s bluffing. Qui-Gon can see that he’s nervous, but that’s his Obi-Wan all over. Blustering his way through whatever uncertainties he might have. Always so sure that his bantha-headedness would see him through to the other side. It makes Qui-Gon smile, and he can see it echo across Obi-Wan’s face. He knows that Qui-Gon knows that he isn’t near as confident as he pretends to be.

“On the bed, then. Elbows and knees,” Qui-Gon says.

Obi-Wan’s relief blossoms through the air. Whether it’s relief that they are finally going to consummate what he’s wanted to for so long or relief that Qui-Gon is letting him get away with his ruse, is impossible to say. He is quick to obey and Qui-Gon undresses the rest of the way before joining him.

There are preparations that are necessarily slow, and those that are born from Qui-Gon’s guilt at having rushed through so much earlier. He tries to stay mindful of which is which, to respect both Obi-Wan’s autonomy and this unexpected gift that leaves Qui-Gon more humbled than he could ever put into words. Instead he tries to show it with gentle fingers and soft murmurs. It’s still not fast enough for Obi-Wan, who Qui-Gon has to calm more than once with a hand laid against the place where the ridge of Obi-Wan’s spine gives way to the swell of his buttocks. 

The unyielding bed groans as Qui-Gon shifts to his knees and Obi-Wan stops breathing. He is tense with expectation, forehead dropped down to his clasped together hands. Qui-Gon wishes he could see his face, but knows from past experience that this is the position they’ll have the best chance of success with.

Instead he reaches out with the Force and can feel Obi-Wan clutch at the tendrils of energy he is sent and respond in kind. He can sense through the shimmer of the Force when Obi-Wan breathes again—can sense when he finally relaxes—and that’s when Qui-Gon presses forward.

“I—” Obi-Wan begins to say something but it is lost as Qui-Gon continues his slow slide inward.

“I know,” Qui-Gon says, because he does. He doesn’t need the Force to see into Obi-Wan’s heart at this moment; it shares the same coordinates with his own.

He holds himself back when he tastes a flare of pain in the air, waiting for Obi-Wan to adjust. Obi-Wan is impatient, tries to urge him to continue, but Qui-Gon is resolute. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says to Obi-Wan and it is both a reassurance and a reproach. Obi-Wan laughs, a thin sound, and nods his understanding.

The pace is just as torturous for Qui-Gon, though he’d never admit it.

A prickle of sweat settles across the broad plain of Obi-Wan’s back like a morning dew. He is gripping the sheets, twisting them between his fingers as his forehead rubs back and forth, seeking purchase on something material before he loses himself completely to a realm of sensation. The further Qui-Gon presses in, the more the airy sound in Obi-Wan’s throat blooms into a groan.

“That’s deep enough, I think,” Qui-Gon says at last and Obi-Wan’s hand flies back to feel the place where they join.

“But I want all of you,” Obi-Wan protests, trying to maneuver backward and pierce himself on the last few inches of Qui-Gon’s cock.

“Obi-Wan. You needn’t rush ahead just because you can. Slow yourself,” Qui-Gon rolls his hips and gets a sharp cry of pleasure for it. “Be here.” Another roll and another cry. “Attend to this moment,” he can’t help but add with a smirk.

“I can’t believe you.” Obi-Wan laughs, loud and biting with delirium. “Now whenever I hear that I'm going to think of—” his words trail off into an exasperated huff.

“Then you wouldn’t be attending to that moment, either.”

“Point,” he concedes, voice a rumble.

Bracketing his hands across the wings of Obi-Wan’s hips, Qui-Gon sets a tempo. Obi-Wan matches him with breathy moans and half-formed pleas. It’s hard to say what warmth is from the lube and what is a heat all Obi-Wan’s own.

Qui-Gon shuts his eyes as he loses himself in the unbearable tightness of this body he’s loved for so long.

He loves Obi-Wan—that isn’t new—but more than that he enjoys him. His wicked eyes and his unflinching bravado. His unrelenting daring as he throws himself into harm’s way time and again. It’s always been present in their time together, but lately his comms have been filled with more stories of risk-taking than Qui-Gon cares to hear. It is an unasked for penance, as if by driving himself mercilessly forward Obi-Wan can make up for the one time he’d fallen hopelessly behind.

Qui-Gon has tried to tell him that he doesn’t hold any blame for that moment—when Obi-Wan had been trapped behind red shields and desperation— but the words always seem to fall at Obi-Wan’s feet like so much detritus. Here, though, is the chance to show him, to use his body to convey the things that language cannot hope to express. Lust, yes, but fondness and devotion, too. Every plunge into Obi-Wan is another chance to prove how wanted he is, in every sense of the word.

He changes his angle and all at once Obi-Wan’s body is drawn up as taut as a stringed bow. “Wait,” he says and immediately Qui-Gon stills.

“Are you alright?”

“No,” he says and then shakes his head. “I mean, yes. Just. Do that again. Right there.”

Short little thrusts and Obi-Wan is groaning feverishly. A little harder and he is pushed forward across the bed. Now Obi-Wan’s head is hitting the wall with a steady cadence and he doesn’t even seem to notice, he’s too lost in his own pleasure.

Reaching out, Qui-Gon cradles his forehead with a palm, attempting to stave off traumatic brain injury, and Obi-Wan tilts his head up and starts to suck on Qui-Gon’s fingers in thanks. It’s electric, a lightning flash of desire crackles down his spine and Qui-Gon instinctively rears up, hooking an arm around Obi-Wan’s torso and bringing him upright until he is on his knees and splayed across Qui-Gon’s lap.

Qui-Gon fucks up into him and as he does he can feel Obi-Wan start to slide down until their hips are pressed together, skin to skin, pulse beat to pulse beat.

“I’m in,” he says, voice rough, and Obi-Wan lets his head fall backward onto Qui-Gon’s shoulder.

“Object lesson on patience—” he swallows and Qui-Gon can feel his throat working where he’s pressed against the side of Qui-Gon’s face. “—and perseverance—” Obi-Wan is breathless but determined. “—too, I suppose, Master.” And it is so wrong that he thrills at that word on Obi-Wan’s lips, but it catches Qui-Gon off-guard. He thrusts harder for the surprise of it. 

Obi-Wan’s amusement is a slow spreading molasses, dark amber and indulgent.

“Master,” he says, just to feel Qui-Gon thrust helplessly at his voice. “Master,” he whispers again, utterly shameless.

“Obi-Wan,” he growls a warning and gets a reedy laugh in return.

“Consider it. Payback. For that. ‘Attend to the moment.’ Business...” Obi-Wan pauses and even knowing what he’s about to say does little to prepare Qui-Gon for when it comes. “...Master.” Obi-Wan’s voice is a flicker in Qui-Gon’s ear that stokes him like an ember until he is burning. 

He reaches around to find Obi-Wan’s cock straining, and Qui-Gon strokes him until he loses the ability to say anything more, blasphemous or otherwise. Obi-Wan twists his head back, bringing their mouths together. Their tongues meet and Obi-Wan is calling out insensibly—ferally—down Qui-Gon’s throat as he clenches tight and shakes apart around Qui-Gon’s body.

Close now himself, Qui-Gon is careful to keep his thrusts measured and shallow. No matter how much he desperately wants to seek out his own release, he knows that he’s pushed Obi-Wan’s body as it is. He can’t make him take any more than he already has, not this first time.

Sensing Qui-Gon slowing down, Obi-Wan rouses himself enough to mutter: “Oh no you don’t. None of that noble, self-sacrificing kriff,” before he rides Qui-Gon so hard that it’s only a matter of moments before he is shuddering and shouting, coming inside Obi-Wan with a strength that sends him reeling. When Qui-Gon withdraws, Obi-Wan sighs and it feels like a loss to him, too.

They stay like that, half-kneeling, half-leaning against the wall. A few breaths pass, and already it's hard for Qui-Gon to believe he was inside Obi-Wan at all. He searches out proof from the hollows of Obi-Wan’s body. Running his hand down Obi-Wan’s spine Qui-Gon presses a finger to his opening, touching for a moment the wet mess he’s become with Qui-Gon’s release. In response he gets a wan moan from where Obi-Wan has slumped over.

As stoically as he can, though he knows his eyes betray his laughter, Qui-Gon brings the finger to his mouth. “Hmm. You were right,” he says. “The lube isn’t bad.”

Obi-Wan should be exhausted, he’s now come twice tonight, but his head snaps up as he watches Qui-Gon tasting his finger, lube warming his mouth on contact. Obi-Wan’s eyes are suddenly dark—wide, blown-out pupil where tempestuous grey should be. “Do that again,” he says and Qui-Gon’s mouth quirks with amusement. 

“I can do you one better,” he replies, tipping Obi-Wan away from the wall. Bonelessly he slides to his stomach and Qui-Gon brings his mouth to Obi-Wan’s ass, licking and tasting until another orgasm is wrenched out of him. Obi-Wan gives a hollow cry as he trembles around Qui-Gon’s tongue, coming dry and shivering.

When Obi-Wan kisses him next, Qui-Gon knows he tastes like their joining and some unknowable flavor of blue, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He kisses Qui-Gon with a dreamy softness until all those other raucous tastes are replaced by the steady warmth of Obi-Wan’s mouth once more. 

They lay down and Obi-Wan starts drifting. Qui-Gon’s hands instinctively soothe him, tracing long lines and short curls around the curve of Obi-Wan’s ribs.

“We should wash up,” Obi-Wan says, eyes closed.

“We’d have to go to the end of the hall.”

Obi-Wan sighs. “That seems very far away at the moment.” He grimaces, as if preparing to do something unpleasant and then hauls himself up to sitting. “Here,” he says. “Move.”

Stripping off the bed’s top sheet, he uses the thin, rough fabric to wipe off the worst of it and then hands the sheet to Qui-Gon to do the same. When he’s done, Obi-Wan tosses the sheet to the floor and settles back down once again, muttering: “No great loss.”

Qui-Gon winds himself around the contours of Obi-Wan’s body, holding him in the demi-dark.

“Seven days more,” he says idly into the quiet, not really expecting a response.

“No,” Obi-Wan says, slurring with fatigue that is being kept at bay by obstinance and sheer bloody-mindedness. “Remember I'm not going to Coruscant. I’m debarking in five days.”

“We’ll have to make it five days well spent,” he responds, pressing a kiss to Obi-Wan’s temple.

Time passes and Qui-Gon begins to drift off himself when Obi-Wan’s voice cuts through the quiet. “And then after that?”

He doesn’t sound tired anymore. He sounds cautious. Vulnerable. 

“After that? We’ll have as long as you’ll have me,” Qui-Gon answers truthfully.

“Oh, alright.” Obi-Wan says with easy daring. “Forever, then.”

Qui-Gon doesn’t breathe. He can’t, not without defiling this moment that is so new it quivers with delicate beginnings.

“I can do that,” he says at last and pulls Obi-Wan closer into his embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you have it! The least angsty fic I've written to date! I hope you liked it, and as always feel free to find me on Tumblr (DarkIsRising) I'm always looking for new friends on there. 
> 
> If I were a better person I'd make this a series where we get to see all five days but I already know I'll never get around to that. So, if anyone wants to write anything to add to this story of feelings and sex on a starferry then have at it, I'll happily link to it. xoxo ~Dark


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